December 16, 2014

The Comunicano Daily

Apple Pay is rolling along. And like iTunes and the iPhone, more and more people and more retailers are using it. What's funny is Google had Wallet long before Apple Pay, yet the attention being given to Wallet vs. Apple Pay is small while Apple gets the attention.

The list of companies working with Apple Pay continues to grow. On Tuesday, Apple announced that in recent weeks the company had signed up dozens more banks, retail stores and start-ups to adopt Apple Pay, the company's new e-commerce product, which allows customers to buy things with little more than a wave of their iPhone.

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos wants to ship goods using unmanned aircraft. Some are skeptical, others nervous, but drones already are improving the way we live. In 2002, a stroke-like event turned Henry Evans into a quadriplegic, depriving him of almost all ability to move.

On Friday, the North American Aerospace Defense Command, NORAD, will launch a giant drone-hunting blimp over Maryland's Aberdeen Proving Grounds just east of Washington D.C. The system includes a 242-foot balloon (technically called an aerostat because it's connected to the ground) that can stay up for a month at a time and a radar to detect - among other potential threats- drones.

Traditionally, privacy worries for consumers and tech companies have been limited to keeping information secure from third parties or hackers. But a series of internal abuses show that tech company employees often have universal access to user information, as well as reason - be it pure voyeuristic curiosity or, in the worst cases, a vendetta - to look at our whereabouts, spending, and of the most private corners of our lives.

From the beginning of January, new EU tax rules will force many businesses offering online services across the Union to take on a load of new administrative responsibilities. The changes have caused particular consternation among micro-businesses providing such services - for a classic example, think about an individual who's making a small amount selling knitting...

LONDON - The British telecommunications company BT said on Monday that it had entered into exclusive talks to acquire the British mobile phone business of Orange of France and Deutsche Telekom of Germany. Orange and Deutsche Telekom confirmed last month that they were in early stage discussions to sell their joint venture EE to BT, Britain's former telecommunications monopoly.

Friends. Enemies. It's hard to figure out what Bose and Apple are these days, but one things for certain, Bose is going from hardware into the services arena and wants to play in the Internet of Things. They have the devices, now they want to dance to the music.

Apple's Beats Electronics and Bose already compete in the headphone and speaker markets, but it appears that Bose may be gearing up to compete with Beats in another area -- streaming music. A Bose job listing first noticed by (via VentureBeat ) seeks a Senior User Experience Designer to work on prototyping Bose's "next generation streaming music platform and ecosystem of products."

Yelp is releasing a new app for business owners. Unsurprisingly called "Yelp for Business Owners," it's available for iOS and Android users in all countries and languages in which Yelp currently operates. Until today, business owners had to tolerate a less than optimal experience accessing their account information on a smartphone.

Over 90 percent of marketers say that retargeted ads are as good as or better than the gold standard in digital marketing, search ads, according to a recent survey by leading retargeter AdRoll. Why? Intent, says AdRoll president and CMO Adam Berke.

Some days the to-do list seems bottomless. Just looking at it is exhausting. We all want to know how to stop being lazy and get more done. I certainly want the answer. So I decided to call a friend who manages to do this - and more.

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December 15, 2014

The Comunicano Daily

The news out of Sydney touched me immediately on Sunday, as it was just about a year ago that I was near the coffee and chocolate shop that is currently under siege. That and the fact that I have friends in Sydney on both personal and professional levels. Thankfully, all are safe, and thanks to iMessage and email I knew within seconds of asking. While not on the same level as 9/11 in New York City, when I think how far we've come in the ability to contact and confirm that people are safe one can quickly realize the impact that technology has on society. What's also a very powerful force today is streaming media and social media. Both are very important to following the story. The first story below will take you to ABC-Australian Broadcasting Corporation's live news broadcast.

Taylor Swift ignited a renewed debate about music industry revenue and the impact of Internet radio on artists. Like many debates what you believe may be driven more by where you stand than by reality. On one side you have artists and music labels that have experienced a decade long slide in music sales.

A new app called Workflow aims to close the divide between the power of OS X and the convenience of iOS. By offering curated and custom workflows, the app can automate just about anything you'd want to do on the iPhone or iPad - along with actions you probably haven't thought of before, like calling an Uber car to take you to your next meeting with one tap.

6:15 AM EST December 15th, 2014 Big players in the payments space tend to have a knack for disrupting every market they enter. Look at Amazon and retail or Uber and cab services. They've stepped on the toes of businesses - big and small - undercut business models, and managed to make a few enemies along the way.

New tracking technology using video may help change the way offers and information are presented to us.

Next-generation tracking technology could be in your gadgets soon

Sophisticated tracking technology, the likes of which you might associate with governments or big companies, may soon be in consumers' hands, homes, cars and local stores. If it works as described - a big "if," of course, - the technology could detect not only people but determine what they are doing, where they are going and even what they may be thinking.

About a year ago, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos made a bold publicity move - he sat down for a 60 Minutes interview and showed off the company's planned use of drones for same-day delivery to its customers. Those familiar with the reluctance surrounding drones in the U.S.

If you've got a charitable effort needing crowdfunding Indiegogo just gave it a kick. Now non-profits can use the Indiegogo platform to raise funds without paying any fees to the company. This doesn't remove costs for credit card transactions, but it helps put more money into organizations that need it.

Indiegogo cuts fees for good causes so you keep every penny

Raising money for medical bills, memorials, sports and other worthy causes are now fee-free on the popular crowdfunding service. More of your money is set to go to good causes as Indiegogo cuts fees. The popular crowdfunding site has got rid of fees when you're raising cash for emergencies, sports, volunteer efforts and other worthy causes.

With the horror of the Sony Pictures breach unfolding in slow motion before us, we are reminded that operational security - OpSec - is absolutely key at any company. Whether or not you traffic in high-value data, the expectation that your servers are secure enough and that your data is worthless is foolhardy.

Verizon is the latest big company to enter the post-Snowden market for secure communication, and it's doing so with an encryption standard that comes with a way for law enforcement to access ostensibly secure phone conversations.

IT'S been called a strategic tool with " irresistible power" by Harvard Business Review. And " the major business lesson of 2014 " by Entrepreneur magazine What exciting new 21st-century technology is this? The age-old art of storytelling - something humans have done since they could first communicate.

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December 14, 2014

This past week the long awaited Brydge Keyboard and Speaker for the iPad arrived. And I love it. Sure it's adding weight to my iPad Air 2, but it's also giving me a real keyboard experience, and the audio that can't be beat.

The Brydge has the fit and finish that compliments my iPad and basically gives me a Mac Book like experience. The keyboard is solid and responsive and has keys that are mapped to the most used iPad functions including brightness and audio controls, as well as the @ key, up, down, left and right cursors, Spotlight and iPad lock/unlock. It even has a dedicated key for SIRI so to say the makers of the Brydge have looked at what people do with their iPads is clearly there.

But it does have a weakness. While it may pair via Bluetooth quickly, when it comes to VoIP, it fails to deliver. And not only does it fail to connect audio from VoIP apps like Google's Hangouts, Counterpath's Bria and Citrix's GoToMeeting, it does one thing worse. It doesn't pass the audio back to the iPad at all. That means everyone on the other side of the conference call or phone call can hear you, but you can't hear them without disabling the Brydge.

Sadly, this defeats one of the Brydge's best feature. The rear facing speaker. What that does in effect is help reduce echo and latency because the sound is being directed away from the iPad's built in mic. (Note: I contacted the customer service team at Brydge and look forward to a reply). This is the same issue which the Mocet Communicator faces with WebEx, JoinMe and GoToMeeting but which due to co-development with CounterPath and by applying the Apple hardware spec was solved with Bria and Skype. But, unlike the Communicator, the Brydge goes with you so the proper handling of voice would be a great fix.

Beyond that one issue, in my three days of use so far, the Brydge more than lives up to it's promise, and their support team has been providing excellent email responses to basic questions including advising that the Air 2 holding clips will be to me this month.

The bottom line, if you want a real Macbook Air replacement, and do all your work in the cloud using apps like Microsoft Office 365, Google Work and more, then the Brydge is a must to be part of your iPad essentials when you want to be Working Anywhere.

December 12, 2014

The Comunicano Daily

Hello from a very wet and rainy, windy, blustery San Diego. Normally called Sun Diego, we're having one of wettest mornings on record with the wet stuff coming in off the coast and making driving rather trecherous. It was so trecherous, today's Breakfast With The Fire Chief, an event being organized by the great folks at San Diego Fire Rescue actually called it off. And I thought only baseball games were called off because of rain?

That's given me some time to whip up today's news and share some really interesting tidbits of news...First up is two articles on the subject of Drones. Both feature Comunicano client PixiePath started by a past client of ours, Bryan Field-Elliot who was one of the minds behind NextAlarm which successfully exited a few years back..Drones are hot business, and we're seeing more and more companies spring up in the sector. Tomorrow, PixiePath will be at the Drone Expo in Los Angeles so if you're in the area, say hello to Bryan and our own Jim Llewellyn who will be on hand...now onto the news..

For the drone fleet conductor comes PixiePath

Companies delivering packages or farms mapping acres and acres of fields might not want to stop at one drone. A fleet can get things done faster. But how do you keep them safe and effective while working as a group? PixiePath, a drone software startup that launched today, thinks it has a solution: the cloud....

The Federal Aviation Administration has taken a hard line so far against most commercial uses of unmanned aerial vehicles (i.e.,drones) for safety and privacy reasons. But one other good reason for taking things slow is that the software for managing such drones has trailed hardware development.

WebRTC continues to find a way into the news with Reuters picking up the story under the watchful eye of long time friend in the Far East Jeremy Wagstaff picking up the story. It was nice to see client Temasys and analyst Dean Bubley, as well as former client at SightSpeed, Scott Lomond quoted in the piece.

Web Real-Time Communication is a proposed Internet standard that would make audio and video as seamless as browsing text and images is now. Installed as part of the browser, video chatting is just a click away - with no need to download an app or register for a service.

Make no mistake about it your in 2015 your cell phone will be used more and more...to help you do things like make payments and be identified. In the State of Iowa, you'll even be able to really use it as your ID too.

Iowa Drivers Will Soon Be Using Their Phones as IDs

The driver's license is going digital. Sometime in 2015, instead of flashing a plastic ID at a cop, drivers in the state of Iowa will be able to show off a mobile app installed on their smartphones that acts as their official license, according to The Des Moines Register .

The Lending Club IPO is a hit and that bodes well for those in peer to peer lending and microfinance. Expect to see more companies jump in to what is a unique and different form of crowd funding.

Lending Club Takes Its IPO Victory Lap, As Competitors Watch Closely

Lending Club, the online loan marketplace that's trying to bring Silicon Valley-styled innovation to the financial industry, pulled off a blockbuster public offering this week. In doing so, the company set the bar expectedly high for every other would-be financial disrupter. The San Francisco-based company raised $870 million from its IPO.

Apple recently started requiring case manufacturers in its Made for iPhone (MFi) licensing program follow new requirements that will ensure cases better protect Apple devices and cover glass from impact, according to sources with knowledge of the new guidelines.

Pardon the pun, but Uber keeps rolling along. They are now moving into China ina big way with Baidu and that comes with both cash and greater awareness in the Far East.

China's Baidu Set To Partner With Uber And Reportedly Invest Up To $600M

Uber may have just raised a fresh $1.2 billion this month, but the company looks set to welcome a new investor, Chinese internet giant Baidu, which is reportedly set to invest as much as $600 million into the U.S. firm.

But as they raise more money, Uber is also going to see more pressure from regulators, who want to put the squeeze on them by banning their apps in iOS and Play stores.

Brussels Minister seeks to ban Uber from Belgium

Ever since it rolled out its UberPOP service in Brussels back in February, heavily-funded Silicon Valley company Uber has been having run-ins with the local government. The saga continues, as Brussels Minister of Mobility, Pascal Smet, will now file an official complaint (article in Dutch) with the public prosecution service against the increasingly controversial Uber.

Dating sites are hot again, and hooking up seems to be on many a Venture Capitalists mind.

VCs Swipe Right For Dating Startups

With two months until Valentine's Day, investors worldwide are singling out a variety of online dating and matchmaking startups that believe tech is the solution to improving our love lives. The $12M Series A announced yesterday for matchmaking app Hinge is the 4th largest round recorded to date for a dating-related startup, beat out only by rounds for Skout, Zoosk, and HowAboutWe.

And this just in...Google may be leaving Russia. Well at least when it comes to engineering talent. This is all part of the concerns surrounding privacy and rights in Russia.

Report: Google Pulls Engineers From Russia

Google will reportedly move engineers out of its Russian office to avoid the country's increasingly restrictive Internet freedom laws. A group of employees will stay in Russia, according to The Wall Street Journal , to focus on sales, business partnerships, user support, marketing, and communications.

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December 06, 2014

Back in the day of VON and VoIP the most interesting part of the conference was always the Carl Ford led Interop. Part of the fun was getting your company in, then bringing all the gear and watching Carl masterfully orchestrate the interrelationships between vendors.

Now, it can and is being done IN THE CLOUD and virtually. This month a bunch of folks have banded together to organize what is described as the world's First Vendor Independent WebRTC Coding Fest, simply known as WebRTC Fest.

The panel of judges reads like a who's who in WebRTC land that observes the space with critical eyes. So if you have a WebRTC idea, why not throw it out there and see if you win the prize....

December 02, 2014

For the past month or so I've been aware of what became news today. I've been named "Business Traveler of the Year" by Business Travel USA Magazine. The honor, which I share with traveling Navy Wife, Heather Wilson, is just that. An honor. It's a "Red Badge of Courage" or in my case it really feels like winning the NHL's "Hart Trophy." So while I've been bestowed other awards like the Chevalier du Commanderie (Faugeres Conferie) which makes me a Knight (of wine) or being named USA Ambassador for the Grenache Association, this one carries the wounds of battle that a frequent business traveler only feels.

As someone who has originate and crafted awards programs in the past for like the Flyers' Cup Bobby Clarke Award and more, I know that not only finding the candidates is the first challenge. The real test comes in selecting the recipients.

But, I digress. If this were the Academy Awards there are people I have to thank. So here goes.

First is Adrianne Buchta, who works for me at Comunicano. She saw the award nomination request and suggested me. Actually she kicked me into doing this.

Second is Peter Koehler, the SVP for IHG and the GM of the San Francisco Intercontinental, where his staff, especially Gina, Earnest, Boris and Jadey go far past the norm in making a business traveler feel at home it is like my other home. Right up there is Shehani De Marseille, who as the former Guest Relations Director there who is now in Cleveland who still to this day looks after me wherever I go.

In London it's Holly Redmond the now Conrad St. James that was Intercontinental Westminster. There as the mistress of guest relations she makes sure I always get not only the same room, but the same treatment.

Down in Australia Joerg Boeckler the GM at the Sydney Intercontinental who had the guts to tell Angelina Jolie I would be sleeping underneath her (room that is) despite the star's hotel agreement, and in Melbourne Intercontinental's, it's Chief Concierge, and perhaps the World's Best at it, James Ridenour, who not only has his finger on the pulse of Melbourne, but who also has one heck of a blog too.

I also have to thank Guy Cooper, who until he retired his limo business was my Private Driver for the past few years and of course, my pal here in San Diego, Steve Pagano, the Hotel Manager at the San Diego Marriott. Getting to know Steve when he was GM at the Del Mar Marriott presented a whole other perspective and his advice years ago benefit me on the road more than he'll ever know.

Then there's my friend of almost 40 years, Larry "the Yaz" Yasner who in 1980 gave me tips on how to go to Europe. Yazzer... little did you know what you started.... and there's also pal Tom Carter, who may log more miles than me each year, and who really defines the title of "Road Warrior." Catching the business travel bug from you over ten years ago is one that never leaves us.....And, I'd be totally remiss if I didn't mention the real guru of business travel, Joe Brancatelli'. Just go read JoeSentMe, as his tips, and those of his colleagues have saved my bacon more than a few times and it's easily worth the annual subscription...yes the list could go on, because unlike the horrors many traveler experience, my connections and friendships I've made have benefited me in spades as I travel the globe in search of great wine, fine food and super business relationships.

So for all those I've come into contact with, who understand the "Business Traveler" I thank you. And for those whom I've gotten upset with, well, I'm just "the guest" after all.

Seriously, I'll have more on this in January at the Awards Show, but for now, just after Thanksgiving Weekend I say a big "thank you" to everyone who has helped, put up with me, and made my life on the road just a little bit better and a whole lot easier.

November 19, 2014

The Comunicano Daily

Lots of news from different parts of the connected world this morning. For starters, IBM wants to take on the problem with email, via a new service called Verse. Hopefully, the song doesn't remain the same. Verse comes at a time when Google is also rolling out INBOX and services like Slack are taking a major foothold in the pseudo time communications sector.

International Business Machines Corp. is launching a new offensive against Google Inc. and others in the email market, offering a Web-based service that marks a rare direct appeal by Big Blue to end users. The computing giant on Tuesday is unveiling IBM Verse, an email service melded with other collaboration and social-media functions.

It's no surprise that smart conferencing service providers see the need to line up with the mobile operators. In my blog post today on VoIPWatch I called out a very key reason as to why both UberConference and Cisco's WebEx have moved in that direction.

Separate announcements Tuesday for business conferencing services, one from AT&T and the other from Sprint, highlight the radically changing business models at U.S. wireless carriers. AT&T is working with Cisco on a cloud-based, video collaboration service that will be available for almost any device when it launches next month.

Wireless charging isn't about mobile payments. At Starbucks t's all about keeping your phone topped up with power while you're coffee cup empties. The real reason is this offering will help keep people lingering around the coffee shop longer, which is one more change in experience design for the Seattle company that was for a few years encouraging their customers to come and go with loud music, cold temperatures, etc. I guess they have caught on.

For the past couple of years, several competitors have been duking it out to become the standard for wireless device charging. Consumers have mostly chosen to wait on the sidelines, grudgingly toting power cords or battery cases for those times when their phones won't make it through the day.

It's often been said that we don't have to worry about Big Brother watching us, as we're all reporting enough publicly on our own. Well now the data we collect via Fitbit is being used in court. This creates all kinds of interesting legal situations.....for starters in physical rehabilitation the data is useful to your medical team, but could be harmful to your legal case.....

Personal injury cases are prime targets for manipulation and conjecture. How do you show that someone who's been in a car accident can't do their job properly, and deserves thousands of dollars in compensation? Till now lawyers have relied on doctors to observe someone for half an hour or so and give their, sometimes-biased opinion.

CUPERTINO, California-November 18, 2014-Apple® today announced the availability of WatchKit, software that gives developers a set of tools to easily create experiences designed specifically for Apple Watch™-Apple's most personal device ever. Apple has the world's most vibrant and innovative developer community, and now these developers can begin developing WatchKit apps before Apple Watch becomes available.

An iPhone is required - at (almost) all times. In Apple's own words, Watch apps extend iOS apps. "You begin your Watch app development with your existing iOS app, which must support iPhone." That's in part because Watch apps' processing power is all coming from the iPhone.

Google has begun letting third-party developers build apps for Android Auto, with the release of a new set of APIs for its in-car software platform. The initial set of APIs out the door support audio and messaging apps, similar to the launch set of features being offered by Apple with CarPlay.

WhatsApp, perhaps the best example of Over The Top (OTT) communications services anywhere just added encryption. This comes at a time when new services like Secret and Whisper are growing in users.

Whatsapp Just Switched On End-To-End Encryption For Hundreds of Millions of Users

Growing up in Soviet Ukraine in the 1980s, Whatsapp founder Jan Koum learned to distrust the government and detest its surveillance. After he emigrated to the U.S. and created his ultra-popular messaging system decades later, he vowed that Whatsapp would never make eavesdropping easy for anyone.

People use Facebook Groups every day to stay in touch with family, collaborate on projects, plan trips and offer support to friends. Today, we're introducing a new Facebook Groups app that helps people share faster and more easily with all the groups in their life.

We're excited to share with you a few new features we've been working on to continue to make Venmo an easy, secure, and fun way to pay people. Easy: Link your bank without your checkbook We've now made it even simpler to link a bank account to Venmo if you use Chase, Wells Fargo, Bank of America, or Citibank.

Last month Spiceworks released a study about mobile security in the enterprise - or, as the case may be, lack thereof. The company found that despite ever-present threat of hacks into corporate systems, corporate IT shops are not investing in mobile device management software or buying mobile device security software, at least not at the levels they should given the deep inroads mobile devices have made in the corporate environment.

It used to be the Diary that television viewers kept was the sacred cow of television ratings. Then came the PeopleMeter. But with the advent of downloaded and streamed content, all that goes out the window. Now Nielsen is going to track the rest of the content, to really tell networks and content producers who is watching what.

Nielsen plans to start measuring SVOD services next month for the first time, The Wall Street Journal reports, citing Nielsen client document. Nielsen meters can measure viewership without the OK from Netflix, Amazon Prime and the like - by analyzing a program's audio components to identify which shows are being streamed.

This post is part of a new series titled "Business Social," and is brought to you by Hootsuite. Avinash Kaushik, an Indian entrepreneur, author and public speaker, once tweeted that "Social media is like teen sex, Everyone wants to do it. No one actually knows how.

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Because of this over-the-top services debacle, the net neutrality debate takes on greater meaning. If carriers can offer their own content and services on their own networks, they don't have to worry as much about whether they are throttling somebody's else's third party service, and they don't have to levy a higher charge on that third party to give its service greater priority on a busy network.

What this also means is interconnection agreements between the carriers and the mobile operators also need to be honored. Thus if data traffic between Sprint and AT&T have to be treated the same as if they were on each other's owned and operated network, a call to Uber Conference from AT&T over the mobile app (if Uber offers this) would have to be as if it was ending up on AT&T and vice versa. This is a very important point and fact as we migrate from circuit switched voice to LTE Voice and VoLTE.

November 18, 2014

The news surrounding Sprint adding UberConference so far has been as loud as a pin drop, but it is something to realize is clearly a tell for where pal Craig Walker is taking the company that is now known as Switch Communications. He's gunning for the enterprise, and with $18 million dollars of A16Z and Google Ventures cash, plus his own money, he and the team there have the pieces, parts and smarts to do it.

While UberConference's sister cloud PBX play, Switch.co is still in a very tightly controlled private beta, UberConference, is going guns a blazing, and this, their second reseller deal (the first was with Google Apps integrator CloudSherpas) further points them squarely in the direction of the enterprise.

And, if you're wondering why they enterprise market and Sprint makes sense? For years Sprint has been in the conferencing business on the wireline side of the house. Their enterprise market remains a core part of the wireless business today, and the close relationship between Google and Sprint isn't far flung for Walker who originally engineered the GoogleVoice Sprint integration along with sidekick Vincent Paquet (who also co-founded GrandCentral with Walker.)

This gives Sprint Business, an IP first conferencing service, and as Android smartphones and tablets can run on the Sprint network faster and with less hiccups (and not because no one is on the network) businesses of all sizes can get a better, all IP experience if they use the data network and Uber's browser integration via Chrome or Firefox -- what's lacking though is the WebRTC aspects for Enterprise users who are locked to Internet Explorer and Safari...

To me, all this points to one thing eventually happening. Switch eventually becomes Google's Business Voice and eventually an exit again for Walker and his team...Batter Up!

The Comunicano Daily

Today starts WebRTC World in San Jose, CA. Already Cisco has made news at their own event a few hundred miles south in Los Angeles with a new service called Project Squared (see a few stories down)....Nokia is back and at the Slush Conference in Helsinki with an Android based tablet to rival the iPad....Technology has moved so fast that some are claiming the smartphone is now passe and connected devices are the new "IT" thing....Better image recognition is alive and well, so watch for new cameras to hit the market that show even more.....NYC Lync's Up with gigabit hotspots resurrecting an idea from another era but now which just may work...New services come to life so you can pay where you are or whomever you know, all part of the mobile payment extravaganza...Those stories and more...all, are just waiting for YOU...

Nokia is launching an Android-powered tablet, marking the Finnish company's return to consumer electronics. The surprise launch pits the firm against Microsoft, which completed its takeover of Nokia's previous mobile-devices business in April. The N1 tablet is due to go on sale in China towards the start of 2015, ahead of other countries.

The internet of Things is still in its infancy, and while more and more devices in our homes, cars and on our bodies are getting connected, one has to wonder just how much longer our phones and tablets will be the connective tissue or the network becomes even more attachable.....

Giants have to move quickly as smartphone era ends

The smartphone's day in the sun was a comparatively brief one in the end. Compared to PCs or landline telephones, the smartphone era could be dated to just seven years, from the iPhone launch to the end of 2014, when two giants, Samsung and Intel, admitted that they needed to look beyond handsets for growth in devices.

If this works in New York City I would expect to see more hotboxes around the world popping up. Think of all the Red Phone Booths in London just beaming away....as WiFi and GigaBit connectivity become common place...(go back to the story about IoT)

The Plan to Turn NYC's Old Payphones Into Free Gigabit Wi-Fi Hot Spots

New York announced the winning bid to transform the existing payphone infrastructure. LinkNYC will bring free gigabit Wi-Fi connectivity to some 7000 street towers. It'll be the largest and most ambitious Wi-Fi network of its kind in the world.

Banks on the mainland are testing an advanced surveillance camera technology that could be installed at key sites including Tiananmen Square and Beijing airport, according to the start-up company behind the system.

Two groups of scientists, working independently, have created artificial intelligence software capable of recognizing and describing the content of photographs and videos with far greater accuracy than ever before, sometimes even mimicking human levels of understanding. Until now, so-called computer vision has largely been limited to recognizing individual objects.

Cisco rolled out two new products yesterday and one, Project Squared seems to feel a lot like a corporate update and roll up of all their services to me.....

Cisco launches new telepresence system, Project Squared mobile app

Cisco is busy retooling its collaboration portfolio with a telepresence system that uses less bandwidth and power and Project Squared, a mobile app that offers video conferencing, document sharing and other tools. Cisco on Monday launched a new three-screen telepresence system designed to cut costs on bandwidth and deployment as well as a mobile collaboration effort dubbed Project Squared.

How we pay and what we pay with is changing and so is the whole payments industry. ApplePay and Google Wallet are only the tip of the iceberg. PayPal and others started the revolution, but the new players are far from all known yet...Everyone wants their piece of the action....

Alibaba launches in Australia with Alipay

Alibaba founder and billionaire Jack Ma's payment offshoot company is eyeing aggressive expansion in Australia. Alipay, already China's largest third-party online payment solution company, is opening an office in Sydney targeting local small and medium-sized businesses.

Snapchat unveiled Snapcash on Monday, a new payments feature that allows users to send and receive money from friends through the app's private messaging service, CEO Evan Spiegel told Re/code. The new tool is powered by payments company Square, which operates its own similar service called Square Cash that allows people to send and receive money through its Cash app or email.

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